


More Than Just Surviving

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst in Epic Quantities, Expect Lots of Psychological Issues and Emotional Baggage, Gross Misuse of Russian, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Shady Science and Questionable Medicine, Some SteveSamBucky if You Squint, Team Bonding, Very Mild Stucky, Warning: Bucky is A Mess of Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 03:48:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6888685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve promises to wake Bucky when they find a solution for the triggers - and they've found it. But it's one thing to disable a ticking time-bomb, another thing entirely to help him feel human again.</p><p>That's where the Avengers come in.</p><p>~ ON HIATUS ~</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to LadyVader1005 for being better at Google-Fu and pointing me in the direction of Bucky's actual birth year.

The world creeps back in, one sense at a time, and he knows that it is wrong. There is no bone-deep chill, no clammy sickness as his organs thaw. He does not smell the dry freezer-burn of the cryogenic tubes nor the undercut of mildew and damp he has come to expect.

Instead, he is… _warm_. It smells of antiseptic and a subtle, familiar thing, and there are no hard-sounding Slavic voices barking orders, only the beep and whir of monitors and hospital machines.

He opens his eyes.

This is not HYDRA – it cannot be. He is strapped down, but the restraints do not bite into his skin or rub him raw, and someone has been kind enough to bundle him beneath a half-dozen blankets.

The room is pristine, all white and chrome, and for a moment the gleaming sterility of the space prickles like bright needles behind his eyes. He blinks, casts his eyes about – _what? Where?_ The first thrill of adrenaline is sharp; his heart stutters, veins electrified. _Oh God, oh God_.

He struggles to turn his head, to sit up, but the heavy, padded straps give no slack across his chest, his middle, thighs, and wrist. _Wrist_ – only one. Where has his arm gone? It aches… What have they done to him? The panic uncurls in his belly, loose and quivering, presses past his lips in a whimper. _Steve?_

Pressure wells behind his eyes, hot and wet. _No, no, no_. _His name is Bucky – he was James Buchanan Barnes. He was born in May? March? Yes, March. 1917. His best friend was Steven Grant Rogers – Captain America – and they had fought HYDRA together. And then… and then…_ Falling. The raw nerve endings in his shorn-off limb _screaming_. And the things he’d done…

The monitors are all beeping too fast – high, anxious chirps – and their little red and green lights are flashing and he doesn’t want to be wiped again, doesn’t want to be burned clean inside and out by 500 volts through his brain. He doesn’t… he can’t…

“ _Nooo!_ ”

A hiss of hydraulics and the opaque doors are sliding back. He thrashes and howls, begging “please, please don’t hurt me” as big, warm hands clamp down on his shoulders and his vision goes blue-and-gold.

“Bucky – oh Jesus, Buck!” And he knows this voice, knows this face that’s inches from his own and blurred by tears. “It’s okay, it’s okay I’m here.”

He only sobs harder, screaming and snapping his teeth as he throws himself over and over against the restraints. There’s a horrible sound ringing in his ears, shrill and keening, and it’s being ripped from his lungs – it’s _him_ , and he can’t stop screaming.

“Bucky, hey – c’mon, it’s all right. I’ve got you…”

“ _Soldat_ ,” a woman’s voice, sharp through the fear. “ _Dostatochno_.”

Bucky goes rigid. His mouth snaps shut, the blue eyes blinking dully, his body stiff as a board beneath Steve’s hands.

Steve is staring at her, scandalized. “ _Natasha_!”

But Bucky sits up, wincing. She is small and slender, self-possessed in a way that would make him think _prima ballerina_ if not for the coolness in her eyes and the half-there memory of her fists and feet in a much more lethal dance. “ _Ya proshu proshcheniya_ ,” he says to her. I’m sorry about that.

Her full mouth holds the faintest quirk of a smile. “It’s nothing – we’ve seen a lot worse.” Somehow, he doesn’t think she’s exaggerating.

Steve continues to stroke his hair, making little soothing noises. Bucky can’t tell whether it’s meant to console Steve or himself, but the remaining tremors start to dissipate beneath the touch. “God,” Steve says. “I was supposed to be here, Buck – right when you woke up. We kept you sedated coming out of cryo to make the transition easier, and the doctors said you weren’t going to be awake for at least another day or so, otherwise I would’ve been here…”

Bucky does his best to school his features, to pretend like his heart isn’t still jackhammering in his chest and his lungs feel too small, but his lips still tremble when he asks “can you unstrap me now?”

“Yeah,” Steve says in a voice no louder than a murmur. “Yeah, of course, Buck.” And if it weren’t for the fact that the restraints had been reinforced with vibranium – a wise precaution, Bucky thinks – Steve looks as though he might simply tear them off Bucky with his bare hands. As it is, he settles for fumbling the straps off with anxious, trembling fingers, keeping up a steady litany of apologies. “I’m so sorry, Bucky – God, I’m sorry…”

“Shut up.”

The instant his upper half is free, Bucky is levering himself upright and wrapping his remaining arm around Steve’s shoulders, tucking his face into the thick juncture of his neck and shoulder. Steve holds him close and smooths his hair, lips pressed into a grim line as Bucky shudders in his arms.

A whoosh of air and the door to the isolation chamber rolls aside. “I came as soon as I was notified,” T’Challa says, skidding in his dress shoes across the tile. The light in his eyes is ominous. “This was not supposed to happen.”

Bucky peels himself away from Steve just enough to shake his head. “I’m fine.” He doesn’t have the heart to admit that this doesn’t even make top ten on his list of most traumatic awakenings.

Steve makes a skeptical noise. “Buck…”

“Regardless, Mister Barnes,” T’Challa cuts in. “Your awakening was not meant to be so traumatic an experience. We had hoped to wake you gradually, so that the effects of the cryogenic thaw might be less severe. I am afraid my physicians were not able to account precisely for your enhanced metabolism.”

The static that’s been numbing Bucky’s brain is beginning to clear, the remains of his fear and the cryo-induced confusion dissipating. “You woke me up, though… Does that mean – did you find a way to fix me?” Oh, he doesn’t dare to hope. He almost can’t bear the possibility of it, of having a chance to be mostly whole…

But Steve is beaming – that toothy, lopsided grin that lights up his whole, solemn face. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, we did.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You’ve heard of technobabble, now get ready for psychotechnobabble with some nonsense-biology thrown in… Definitely putting those extracurricular psych credits to good use...
> 
> A HUGE thank you is owed to spellitwithyourpeas for being a kind and patient person who doesn’t mind when I harass her with weird medical questions and crippling self-doubt. SHE IS THE LITERAL BEST.

It’s not a guarantee, T’Challa admits when Bucky is a bit more settled and practically immobilized by the blankets Steve keeps tucking around his shoulders. But, at the very least, they’ve discovered the mechanism HYDRA had used to control him these past seventy-some years.

T’Challa slides a file of scanned images across the conference table, Rorschach blots of color and outlines that mean absolutely nothing to Bucky. “It is a remarkable demonstration of resilience,” he says “for all intents and purposes you should be brain dead or at the very least suffering from severe cognitive impairment. It appears, though, that the serum you were treated with has enhanced the regeneration rate of your cells – your body is constantly repairing itself, healing the damage being done to it rapidly and efficiently enough to stave off the gross cell death we would expect to see in your condition.”

“Buck,” Steve says in response to the harsh little gasp that escapes the slumping, rumpled cocoon of blankets on his left. “We don’t have to do this now.”

Bucky grits his teeth and tries to ignore the uneasy clenching in his gut. “I want to know.”

“Of course,” Steve’s voice softens, his hands come up to reassure. “Of course, and you have every right to know, Bucky – but you look exhausted.” _Ragged_ , he does not add. _Fragile, wounded_. _Defeated_. “You don’t need to do this right out of cryo, you can take some time. No one’s rushing you.”

He doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand the burning need to know what’s wrong with him. To know if he can be saved, if there’s anything left for them to salvage from his wreckage. “Steve,” he insists. “I _need_ to know.”

The set of the captain’s jaw is decidedly unhappy with the whole situation, but he is wise enough that he only nods and settles himself so that their shoulders press together. A silent show of support, reassurance. _I’ll be right here for you._

It’s Sam, who has taken up an impromptu guard behind Bucky’s right shoulder who speaks up, leaning over to drum his fingers on the glossy print-outs of Bucky’s brain. “Now, I’m not exactly an expert in super soldier physiology,” he says “but I’m pretty sure brains aren’t supposed to look like this.” He points to the strange, solid blots on the scan.

“You are correct,” T’Challa agrees. “What you are seeing in these images is an extensively integrated neural implant. The implant is triggered by the Winter Soldier’s code words which set off a high-voltage electrical impulse that disrupts all normal brain activity.”

Steve’s hand has inched its way from clenching the arm rest of his own chair to resting against Bucky’s wrist. His grip is solid, heavy enough to keep Bucky grounded even as his mind feels like it might float a million miles away.

“So you’re telling us JB here is walking around with the finest in Soviet shock collar technology all primed and ready to scramble his eggs at any given moment.” Sam sighs, deflating. “Jesus Christ.”

Bucky’s fingers go _tap-tap-tap_ against the lacquered tabletop. His intestines twist, tying themselves into tighter and tighter knots.

T’Challa nods, his smooth face grim. “That is one way of putting it, yes. The electrical impulses put out by the implant provide enough input to overwhelm the nervous system, the temporary shutdown of sensory input and higher cognitive function allowed HYDRA to induce a state of _tabula rasa_ in you, Mister Barnes – that is, a ‘blank slate’. This treatment also results in the death of surrounding neural tissue, which is continuously being corrected by the serum’s enhanced healing factors. However, this cycle of rapid cell death and regrowth has caused the implant to become deeply entrenched in your brain.”

Bucky already knows where this is going. He’s too tired to keep doing this, too tired to hold on to these last slivers of hope. “So you can’t remove it,” he says, shoulders slumping. “Why did you wake me up, then?” There is a terrible, damning hitch in his breath.

“No, Buck,” the bulk of Steve’s body is angled toward him, his big hands bracketing Bucky’s blanketed shoulders. His voice is gentle, breathless. “No, we can’t remove it – but we can disable it. We can shut it down and make sure it’ll never work again.” The look on his face is stupidly _hopeful_ and _tender_ , and it squeezes Bucky’s heart like a fist. “I told you I’d take care of you, Bucky – that we’d find a solution.” _Did you doubt me?_

He is mute. _No_ , he wants to say, _no I never doubted you. But it’s been so long since I ever had anything like hope. I didn’t dare to imagine it_.

Again, it’s Sam who breaks the silence – practical where Steve and Bucky are too broken, too wrapped up in pulled heartstrings and bruised emotions to be able to think clearly. “Can you disable this thing externally?” Unthinking, he curls his left hand around the back of Bucky’s seat and Bucky does not flinch away. “Because, frankly, a radical craniotomy is like the _last_ thing this kid needs.”

Strapped down. Screaming. They’d dig into his brain and pull out all the important parts of him, leave him flayed open and empty. He imagines scalpels and forceps, bloody chunks of matter lifted out, wrenched away – is he really imagining? His heart seizes, a rush of endorphins flooding his veins. Does he flee? Does he fight?

He does neither, instead digs the nails of his flesh hand into the meat of his thigh and tries his best not to go to pieces right there in the sleek, black-and-white conference room.

“I…” His lips tremble. “I don’t want to be taken apart again…”

Needles and wires and thick black threads stitching him back together…

Steve rubs soothing circles into his back, hovering around Bucky as though he could try and surround him completely, blocking out all the evil things with 240 pounds of muscle and scrappy righteousness. He doesn’t take his eyes off Bucky, but addresses Sam’s question in a low voice. “Wanda will do it. She’ll disable it without ever having to touch it.”

“Wanda?” Bucky tilts his head. “The little Eastern European one with the-” he pantomimes her fluid, sinuous gestures with his hand, eyebrows raised.

Sam chuckles. “Yeah, that’s the one.” It certainly explains the new set to Wanda’s shoulders, the way she’s thrown herself all over again into training her powers, spending hours hidden away in the bowels of the Wakandan medical facility with Steve and T’Challa. “How come this is the first I’m hearing of your master plan?”

Steve’s bright blue eyes are apologetic, his lips pressed thin. “We wanted to be sure that there was a good chance it would work. There’s a lot of unknowns here.”

Unknowns. Who knows what’s hidden in Bucky’s head, what kind of _programming_ or horror they might find? They don’t even know the full effects of Zola’s bastardized serum – even with all of Erskine’s notes they hardly know how _Steve’s_ serum works.

There’s a very real risk that, when she picks her way through Bucky’s battle-scarred brain Wanda may stumble across a trip wire, a self-destruct protocol. He may not survive this.

Bucky swallows hard, nods. He will endure the intrusion, the questing fingers in his brain, one last time. “Okay,” he whispers. “Okay. When do we start?”

Three pairs of eyes fix on him, varying degrees of gentle and fond and anxious. It starts a crawling, wriggly sensation beneath his skin, the hairs on his arm and neck prickling – he wants to scratch himself raw, to itch his way out of his battered, ruined body.

“Two days,” T’Challa answers at last. “My doctors want to make certain that you do not suffer any negative effects after the weeks you have spent in stasis. We hope to avoid as much trauma as we are able with this procedure.” Here, his eyes grow kind and warm. “We do not wish to see you harmed, Mister Barnes.”

The echo of a voice, Slavic and nasal. _I do not wish to harm you, Sergeant Barnes. This will be much easier if you cooperate_.


	3. Chapter 3

“I…” Bucky goes white as a sheet, a clammy sheen of sweat prickling over his skin. “I have to…” His eyes are wide and wild, full of white, darting around the conference room and seeing nothing. “I can’t…”

He bolts.

They are too stunned for a moment to chase after him, and he makes it halfway down the hall, weaving like a drunk without his prosthetic to serve as counterbalance, before he stumbles against the wall and sinks to the ground with a sob.

Strapped down and screaming. _My name is James Buchanan Barnes. US Army Sergeant. 107 th. 32557038. My name is James Buchanan Barnes…_ Something burning in his veins, liquid fire that scorches him from the inside out. Acid bubbles beneath his skin, separating bone from flesh and flesh from soul. His bones burn to ash and his marrow is reduced to cinders and there is something new and black and bleak left in the wake of it.

They plant the first seeds in his core, shoot them up in his veins and spear them into his muscle fibers – the little black fingers that leave no bit of him untainted, untouched. They worm their way into every orifice, dig him open and tear out the useless parts, all the good bits that made him real. Whole.

He clamps his jaws around the meat of his hand to muffle the screams, sinks his teeth into the _opponens pollicis_ of his thumb until he tastes blood, dirty iron in his mouth, and that only sets off another firecracker chain of memories, black and blue and red and gunmetal-wretched behind his eyes.

“Sam – God, Sam what do I do?!” A hand on his shoulder, at the place where metal meets flesh, and he jerks away because even the softest of touches makes his scars scream. “I don’t know how to help him…”

“You could start by shutting up and giving him some space,” the second voice breaks in, drawling and sardonic. “Just let him breathe, Steve.”

Bucky peels his eyes open, stares up at the patient, knowing look on Sam’s face as he feels his breath catch and his chest heave. He wants to die, wants to hide, he wants it to stop – _make it stop, please_ …

“I know, man,” Sam soothes. “I know. But you’re gonna be okay. You’re _safe_.” He reaches out, slow and careful, and peels the flesh hand from between Bucky’s teeth. “I want you to look at me, Barnes,” he says, still holding Bucky’s bloodied hand in his own dry and calloused fingers. “Watch me breathe. Okay? I want you to do exactly as I do, soldier. In,” he drags in a deep breath through his nose, inhaling until his lungs are full behind his ribs. “And out,” a great, long sigh between his lips.

Bucky screws his eyes shut, curls his knees up tighter and bunches his shoulders, trying to become small, insignificant. “I can’t…”

“You can.” Sam gives his hand a squeeze. “You can and you will, because you’ve got Steve and me to help you. We aren’t gonna let you fall.”

Bucky whimpers. It’s too much.

And Steve, who sat back on his heels feeling helpless, reaches out and there is blue fire in his eyes when he locks his fingers around Bucky’s wrist. Bucky knows what he is going to say, mouths the words as Steve says “I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.” _I won’t let you go again. I’m not losing you this time._ “Now do like Sam said, Buck – concentrate on your breathing.”

He does. It hurts – his lungs spasm against his ribs, his diaphragm burning – but he gasps and manages one breath, then another. The three of them sit in an empty hallway in a Wakandan medical center and breathe in tandem until the pounding of their hearts synchronizes in their pressed-together wrists.

Bucky’s head starts to clear as the vise-like tightness eases. The skeletons are shoved back into his closet, the ghosts laid to rest once more. He shivers, risks looking Steve in the eye, and cannot manage to free the words “I’m okay” from his tongue.

Steve says it for him, hauling Bucky up into the safety of his arms. “You’re okay,” he promises and one big hand comes up to cup that back of Bucky’s head, tucking his face into Steve’s shoulder so that no one else can see the hot, exhausted tears that manage to escape.

“You’re gonna be just fine.” Sam’s hand, pressed into the space between Bucky’s hunched and trembling shoulder blades, bleeds warmth through the thin fabric of his scrubs.

They stay like that for what might be minutes, or maybe hours; long enough that the hard tiles make Sam’s knees ache. They breathe, simply existing, and there are no expectations. Each of them is prepared to sit on the chilly tile floor all day if need be, to wait until the wounds scab over enough that they might regain their equilibrium and face the world once more.

Bucky has gone so still and silent that Steve thinks he must have shuddered and cried himself to sleep. He catches Sam’s eye over the slope of dark, tangled hair. “You don’t have to stay,” Steve murmurs. “I can manage getting him to his room myself.”

Sam’s half-lidded eyes crinkle, the barest hint of the old smirk curling at his lips. “Can’t think of any place I’d rather be right now, Steve,” he says. “I’m in this for the long haul with both of you, for better or for worse now.”

The tension melts from Steve’s shoulders when he hears this. He resettles the curve of his back against the wall, the skin around his eyes tight and discolored. Sam knows he has not been sleeping well – if at all. He tips his head back and says “I just wish I knew what to do. About the Accords, Tony, the team… I’m floundering, Sam. I’ve got no plan, no idea about what’s supposed to happen next. You followed me because you trusted me, because you agreed that the Accords were dangerous. I mean, they would’ve stripped us of our autonomy, we’d be no more than the UN’s attack dogs. _Go here, shoot them_ – _smile for the goddamn camera and say your lines, Captain Rogers_. I’ve lived it before and I won’t do it again.”

Sam thinks of the notebook on exhibit in the Smithsonian, open behind the glass to a pencil sketch – a dancing monkey with the old USO shield and cowl. “Steve…”

“It was _right_ , opposing the Accords, because they would’ve turned us into weapons. They would’ve been able to…” Steve swallows hard, does not seem to trust himself to speak. He looks so young, and so tired. “We’d have ended up like him,” and he points his chin at the motionless lump of ex-assassin in his arms. “Not the same, but… not far from it.”

Forced to fight, Sam thinks. Forced to kill and never given any choice in the matter. He doesn’t want to imagine it, tries not to dwell on thoughts of _seventy years_ and _Winter Soldier Program Files_ and _he didn’t have a choice!_

“But, look where I’ve led us,” Steve continues, shaking his head. “It’d be one thing if it was just me and Buck. But this isn’t fair to you or Wanda. Clint and Scott have _families_ – they can’t even go home to see their kids because of a choice _I_ made.”

“You were right, Steve,” Sam says. “The Accords were dirty. And I don’t know about the others, but I’m long done with taking orders from folks who haven’t seen the cost of the fight with their own eyes.” Sam draws up his legs and sighs. “We made our own choices, and we _chose_ to follow you. But none of us expects you to have all the answers, either. You may be Captain America, man, but you’re still only human.”

Steve startles, jerking as fingers tap feather-light against his chest. “Buck?”

“Wasn’t sleeping,” Bucky mutters into Steve’s damp t-shirt. One grey eye peers out at Sam from behind the curtain of hacked-up hair. “I like this guy, Steve. He keeps your fuckin’ martyr complex in check.”

Sam wishes he had a camera handy to capture the split-second look of outrage that flares on Steve’s face.

“Wh – I don’t…”

It’s hilarious watching Steve sputter, eyebrows climbing toward his hairline, and Sam can’t help but throw his head back and laugh, loud and healing. Even Bucky manages a choked off little chuckle.

It’s interrupted by the clicking of high heels on the tile and a familiar, husky voice that says “well, this is a far more pleasant sight than the one I expected to find.” Natasha – Bucky recognizes her from the cryo chamber – stands over them, arms folded. “T’Challa told me what happened. You boys okay?”

Sam shrugs. “We’re getting’ there.”

She softens and, again, there is a small quirk to her lips. “Wanda and Clint made dinner, so it’s goulash and dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets – real gourmet stuff – if you’re hungry.”

“Thanks, Nat.” Steve tips his head back to meet her fond, smirking look. “Just give us a minute, will you?”

“Of course.” She flips a few loose curls over her shoulder. “I have to leave in a few hours – Hill’s called me back in. Strictly confidential and completely unrelated to any Avengers activity.” There’s a hint of bitterness that colors her voice when she says this, but it’s gone as quickly as it comes. “Try not to do anything dangerous while I’m gone.”

“Aw, Nat,” Steve chuckles, all smiles and good-ol’-boy charm. “What do you take us for?”

One perfectly groomed eyebrow rises. “A fiercely loyal ménage trois of international fugitives with a combined hero complex larger than Manhattan and a total lack of self-preservation. I _know_ you, Rogers.”

Bucky has managed to sit up, bracketed as he is by four massive, super-soldier limbs, and he stares up at Natasha with wide, baleful eyes. “I don’t have a hero complex…”

“ _Podozhdi i uvidish_ ,” she returns with a cool look. “ _Ty delal plokhiye veshchi, no ty ne plokhoy chelovek, Barnes. Ya nadeyus', ty eto znaesh._ ” Bending neatly at the waist, she presses a dry, light kiss to his forehead and then she is gone in a whiff of sage and rosemary shampoo.

Steve tilts his head, Bucky has gone very still, his eyes vacant. “Buck? What was that supposed to mean?”

“It…” Bucky swallows. “It was a reminder.” _You are not a monster._

_Not anymore._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve was shortchanged in Civil War - Team Iron Man had so much time on screen to explain their actions, but Steve got almost none. So here's my attempt at justifying why he was so against the Accords.
> 
> THANK YOU REATY FOR CORRECTING MY DUMB GOOGLE-RUSSIAN
> 
> "Podozhdi i uvidish" - You wait and see.
> 
> "“Ty delal plokhiye veshchi, no ty ne plokhoy chelovek, Barnes. Ya nadeyus', ty eto znaesh.” - You did bad things, but you are not a bad man, Barnes. I hope you know that.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished reading this gorgeous book “The Prisoner of Heaven” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and a couple of the quotes really stuck out at me: “He seems to spend most of his time trapped in a sort of purgatory he’s been building in his own head, where remorse and pain are eating him alive (p. 84) and “… the stranger had a demon inside him, the demon of remorse, and that his soul wanted to flee to the end of the tunnel and rest in a dark void.” (p. 146) – I couldn’t help but think of Bucky when I read these lines.

There are three heaping plates of goulash-and-nuggets lined up for them on the kitchen counter, guarded by a note written in Wanda’s scribbly hand.

_For Steve Sam & Bucky – I used only the mild paprika this time. Your taste-buds are safe. Enjoy :)_

Steve grins and shakes his head, setting the note aside as they gather up their plates. “I’m glad she’s cooking again,” he admits to Sam as they settle in on couches that have soaked up an afternoon’s worth of Wakandan sun. “I was worried about her for a while.”

Sam nods, shoveling goulash. They’d all been worried. He’d watched as Ross’s men shot her up with tranquilizers, as they manhandled her into the thick blue straightjacket and snapped the inhibitor collar around her neck. Oh, she had kicked and screamed and spat burning sparks, and each time the men behind the glass cranked the dial higher and higher until the twin prongs of the collar left burn marks on her long, white neck. Then she had cried, silent and stiff-lipped, the mascara wet and trailing down her cheeks while Clint took up the screaming on her behalf, banged his fists against the bulletproof glass and yelled himself hoarse.

“ _She’s just a fuckin’ kid! Leave her alone you goddamn bastards!_ ” And when he had exhausted himself, the archer had sat with his back to the wall that separated them and hummed, carnival tunes and half-remembered childhood ditties. “Wanda, honey, you’re gonna be all right. It’s going to be okay.” A steady litany of promises and reassurances that Sam echoed, even as he and Clint exchanged a bleak, heavy-laden look. The odds didn’t look good.

She’d flinched when Clint knelt beside her, murmuring and paternal as he unwrapped the straightjacket and peeled off her collar. And, when she stepped out of the cell, Steve had gripped her shoulders, cupped her cheek and said “are you all right” and “oh, Wanda,” and then “I’m so sorry.”

They had stumbled their way to the Wakandan quinjet, where she had tucked her little white hands up under her arms and fallen fast asleep, only to wake somewhere over Sudan, screaming for Pietro. Steve had held her back-to-chest, pinning her arms to her sides as gently as he could and looking like he couldn’t decide whether to commit seppuku or turn the jet around and kill every last one of the wretched, sadistic RAFT guards, while Clint held both of Wanda’s hands and tried to reach her through the litany of Sokovian pleas while she nearly shook the jet apart with her power.

She had not spoken for three days after leaving the RAFT, had shied away from their touches and kind words, kept her chin tucked down and her hands jammed into pockets. Steve had watched guiltily from the corner of his eyes as she rubbed at the faded marks on her neck – electric imprints of vampire fangs that had sucked the light from her eyes and the sparks from her fingertips.

Now, a month and a half later, she was still fragile. There was an uncertainty in her gestures that hadn’t been there before, a hesitance where it came to rolling little red will o’ wisps between her fingers. But she smiled again, and she cooked mass quantities of baked goods and Sokovian favorites, and Steve – who had been reeling from the recovery and loss of his dear fragile friend, who had taken it upon himself to coax and comfort Wanda – had felt his heart skip a beat the first time he heard her laugh again.

“Wanda’s a tough kid,” Sam says as they eat. “And, damn, if I’m not grateful that the girl knows how to cook.” They take turns, of course – Scott has a remarkable gift for all things breakfast, Sam knows his way around the staple dishes of bachelor life, Clint lives out of the microwave, and if there’s no other choice they concede and let Steve make his weird casseroles – but Wanda is the only one who _enjoys_ cooking. She insists that she finds it soothing, even when Natasha protests that it leans just a bit too far toward the side of sexism.

“Thank God for that,” Steve agrees. The little knot of worry has reappeared between his eyebrows. “You all right, Buck? You’re awful quiet, and you’ve hardly touched your food.”

Bucky has the plate balanced on his knees, pushing the noodles around idly with his fork. “Cryo messes with my stomach,” he admits with one of those pained, cut-short grimaces. “It’ll take a few days before I can eat much.” And he sets the plate aside with a sigh, curling forward slowly until he can rest his elbow on his knee, shoulders hunched and tense. “Fuckin’ HYDRA.” He drops his head, long dark hair falling across his eyes, and says nothing more. _There’s nothing he_ can _say_ , he thinks. There aren’t words for the sick, mournful sensations that keep rising in his chest, squeezing his lungs and burning bilious in his throat.

They sit in silence for a long moment, punctuated by the worried looks Steve keeps directing at Sam, his blue eyes full of anguish, fists curling and uncurling in his lap – tense with the desire to do something, anything to ease the pain of the silent war going on behind Bucky’s eyes.

“Fucking HYDRA’s right,” Sam agrees at last. “You gonna be all right, JB?”

Bucky bites the inside of his cheek, tastes the sudden well of blood against his teeth. He focuses on the facts. “Your name,” he says, slow and stilted, “is Sam Wilson. Alias, Falcon. I’ve tried to kill you at least three times.” He swallows down the bitterness on his tongue. “Now, Steve I get – we have a history, even though my brain’s been blended so many times I can’t hardly remember it, but we loved each other. And he’s got a weird thing about seeing the good in everyone – even someone as ruined up as me – so I guess I understand why he still gives a damn after I’ve tried to rearrange his face on multiple occasions. But you,” here he turns the full force of his steel-blue eyes on Sam, they are frightened and uncertain and pleading. “You, I can’t figure out. Why do you _care_?”

The brunt force of the question is like a strike to the solar plexus, quick, driving the air from Sam’s lungs. He struggles to define a coherent thought. “Man, one day out of cryo and you’re already pullin’ out the big questions.” He sits forward, bracing his elbows on his outturned knees. “I’ll level with you. I served two tours as a pararescue before I was tapped for an experimental Air Force program – the FALCON program – with my partner, Riley.” The old nostalgia is creeping back into his voice, the same old hurts, that damnable lump that rises in his throat. “The pair of us, we were somethin’ else entirely. It was like nothing could touch us when we were up there with our wings – we were _immortal_.” The adrenaline thrills, wind skimming over his wings and streaming in his eyes, only a heartbeat in his ears and Riley’s voice on the comms. “And then he went and pulled an Icarus, went head-on with an RPG. I…” he swallows hard. “I tried to catch him, but there wasn’t even anything left to _catch_.”

Bucky does not appear to be breathing, still and silent as the grave. His blue-grey eyes have grown enormous, horrified.

Sam continues, aware of Steve’s hand on his arm, steadying. “I get grief, and I get feeling helpless, and after we found out you’d survived – well, I may not have been able to save Riley, but I’ll be damned if I don’t at least _try_ to help Steve catch you.”

A single quicksilver trail, wetness slipping down his cheek. _There’s nothing left of me to catch, either_. He cannot bring himself to look at Sam, to see the kindness and naked grief there. “I don’t get why you all keep thinking I’m worth this,” Bucky rasps, and he feels the vise around his lungs tighten. “Jesus Christ. I tried to _murder_ you. _Repeatedly_.”

“To be fair, you weren’t exactly in your right mind-”

" _Bullshit!_ ” Bucky’s face goes red and his eyes blaze, brimming with anguish and anger. He is on his feet in an instant, the tears falling in earnest, his mouth twisted into a snarl. “I don’t give a good goddamn if it was HYDRA or Karpov or Alexander fucking Pierce giving the orders, I’m still the one who pulled the trigger! The blood is on my hands – _mine_ – and it always will be. The Starks? My face was the last one they saw, not the men who gave the orders, not the organization that pulled all the strings – they saw me. It doesn’t matter whether or not I had a choice. _I still did it and I can never forgive myself for it_.” And he folds back onto the couch like a ragdoll, all the stuffing torn out of him. He buries his face in his flesh hand and the words come out small and wounded. “You can’t understand what it’s _like_ …”

“No, they really can’t,” agrees the voice over Bucky’s shoulder. “But I do.” Clint steps fully into view, dressed in his civvies and twisting one of the StarkTech arrowheads between his calloused fingertips. “I don’t mean to interrupt the therapy session,” Clint hesitates.

Sam shakes his head, still blinking like a deer in headlights. “By all means.”

Clint perches on the coffee table, does not take his eyes off Bucky’s hunched and dejected form. “A few weeks has nothin’ on seventy-odd years of not being able to own your own mind, but I know what it’s like to wake up knowing that you hurt people.” He shrugs. “Maybe you didn’t have a choice, maybe you were brainwashed or manipulated or tortured into compliance – but you still did it, and you can’t take it back.”

Bucky flinches, lets out a soft, painful moan.

“Do you know how I live with myself?” Clint tilts his head, his voice has taken on the same gentle, lecturing tone that he’s used to talk Wanda off the ledge time and time again. It’s the voice of a father. “I tell myself that I’m a father and a husband, and if I have a family that can still love me then I must not be as irredeemable as I think. And I can’t change the past or what I did or the fact that there’s a good deal of blood on my hands – all I can do is try to make tomorrow better than yesterday was.”

“And it works?” The blue eyes are full of fear and, maybe, a flicker of hope.

Clint shrugs. “Most days. It’s not something you can change or forget about – but it’s something you grow to tolerate. And on the bad days, you gotta rely on your team, your family, to help you out and hold you up.” He clasps Bucky’s flesh-and-blood shoulder and his tired eyes are earnest. “I’m not a gambling man, but you’ve lived through so much already – I’ll bet you can survive this too.”

“And you won’t ever have to do it alone,” Steve insists, having recovered his voice. “You can let go, Buck, and I promise we’ll catch you.”

Sam nods. “We’re not expecting you to jump right in with the trust falls yet, JB – but you’ve got a safety net now. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

It would be a remarkable thing, Bucky thinks, to not be afraid. He’d like to try.


	5. Chapter 5

Bucky spends the day before his ‘procedure’ avoiding the fugitive Avengers. It’s a precautionary thing, he explains when Steve finally works up the courage to ask.

“It’s just safer right now if I avoid them,” Bucky admits. “Until we can be sure that HYDRA’s conditioning is out of my head and there are no more triggers… I don’t want to have another episode and hurt anyone.” If it comes down to it, though, he has contingency plans in place, has calculated again and again _exactly_ how it would go if he did snap.

Sam, Steve, and Clint are considered ‘hazards’ in the event that Winter Soldier decides to come out to play. Sam and Clint because they are unenhanced and far too easy to break, and Steve because Bucky would bet every last scrap of his sanity that Steve will do something stupid like try and reason with the Soldier.

Wanda and Scott, though, are ‘damage control’. T’Challa as well. Bucky has calculated and recalculated the odds; against Wanda’s enhancements and the not-so-little ace up Scott’s sleeve, the Soldier is no match. And, he has spoken to T’Challa about this – out of Steve’s earshot – in the event that there is no salvaging Bucky, the Black Panther is prepared to do what is necessary; he will kill the Soldier.

Bucky spent the first night out of cryo calculating, writing out scenarios in great detail.

_Winter Soldier Trigger Words: Zhelaniye, Rzhavyy, Semnadtsat’, Rassvet, Pech’, Devyat’, Dobroserdechnyy, Vozvrashcheniye Na Rodinu, Odin, Gruzovoy Vagon._

_If compliance is not initiated, lethal force must be used._

_Do not try to take me alive._

He had presented T’Challa with the sheaf of pages the next morning, keeping a wary eye out for Steve or Sam. “Here,” he’d said. “Just in case.”

T’Challa had not protested. His expression had softened, his eyes knowing and sad. “Just in case,” he’d agreed. The papers had disappeared into the false bottom of his desk drawer, and while T’Challa had made a promise to Bucky, he did not expect the pages to see the light of day except as ashes rising from the incinerator.

Now Bucky has only twenty hours – stretching out like an eternity ahead of him – before his world, his _mind_ , is irrevocably altered. Unshackled. The thought of it soars behind his breastbone, swelling and fragile and he hardly dares to hope. It’s terrifying. They may not succeed, they may destroy him in the process – but, God, it just might _work_.

He can’t even imagine it, being in control, alone in his own mind. It leaves him cold, sick and unsettled as though he drank too much ice water on an empty stomach.

There’s a knock on the door. “Buck?”

He’s concealed himself in the standard-issue bedroom next to Steve’s. It’s sprawling and luxurious, every surface soft and pristine, but it’s all done up in shades of grey and white and Bucky’s mind keeps wandering, the walls serve as a projector screen playing back the endless horrors and half-memories he’s lived. He has spent the last hour perched on the edge of the bed with his knees drawn up, ready to jump to fight to flee – instead he sits and watches the shadows and nightmares on his clean white wall and does not notice the fact that he cannot stop trembling. “You can come in,” he croaks.

“Hey,” Steve cracks the door open, poking his head and shoulders through the gap. “You okay?”

 _No,_ Bucky thinks. _No, I’m terrified and exhilarated and I don’t know how to hope – I don’t know what freedom feels like anymore, and happiness scares the hell out of me_. “Yeah,” he says instead. “I’m all right.”

Steve’s eyebrows creep toward his hairline. “Sure, you’re the absolute picture of all right.” He opens the door a little wider, just enough to let the rest of himself in and no further, containing the two of them and their energy in the expansive, open bedroom. Bucky sees the pencils and charcoal in his hand, the sketchbook tucked up under his arm. “Mind if I join you in here? I could use some peace and quiet.”

 _You won’t find any peace here_ , Bucky’s mind supplies bitterly. “Sure.”

He doesn’t crowd up next to Bucky, doesn’t sprawl out like he used to, just hunches his shoulders and balances the sketchbook on his knee, leaving a few polite inches of space between the pair of them. It feels like a great divide, distant and chilly and Bucky who has locked himself up in his room in self-imposed exile is suddenly desperate not to feel so alone.

Steve is warm and solid and real, and Bucky inches closer, pressing them shoulder-to-shoulder as Steve hums and strokes graceful graphite lines across the thick, creamy paper. Bucky leans into him and the sensation of metal restraints biting at his skin fades, replaced by the press of solid muscle and warm skin. As he breathes the smell of blood and gunpowder becomes India rubber erasers, detergent, the ore scent of pencil lead. It’s Steve’s heartbeat, and Steve’s voice humming softly and out-of-tune, and he watches as the pencil scratches out smooth curves and wide, cool eyes. The long slope of a forehead and a pair of heavy, hoop earrings – the face of Aneka appears, head of the Dora Majile and T’Challa’s favorite bodyguard.

Bucky’s head grows heavy, tilting toward Steve’s shoulder as he watches the highlights of skin emerge, irises and pupils with little bright spots and thick, delicate eyelashes penciled in with a sure, steady hand. His own hand has not stopped trembling. “Steve?” His voice is tiny in the largeness of the room, faint against the cacophony of the world that threatens to overwhelm him. So many ghosts, so many dead… If he really tried, he thinks he could recite that last words of every person he ever killed, their final gasps and cries that wake him when he drifts into a few hours of fitful sleep.

The pencil does not stop scratching. “Yeah?”

“You’re not just here to sketch, are you?” He tips his head just enough that he can see the corner of Steve’s mouth quirk upwards.

“Nope.” Steve shifts, slides an arm around Bucky’s middle to support him. His clear blue eyes take in Bucky’s slumped, dejected figure, the several days of stubble and dark circles smeared beneath his listless eyes. “You’re dealing with a lot right now, Buck. Everything with HYDRA, the things that happened to you,” it leaves bitter taste in his mouth but he adds “the things you did. And you’re thrust into a strange place with a bunch of strange people. I just want to be here for you in whatever way you need me.”

He reaches out and tucks a loose strand of dark hair behind Bucky’s ear. “When I came out of the ice I was completely alone – it was a whole new world, everyone I loved was gone… I had SHIELD to reintegrate me and get me up to speed on things, but Director Fury wasn’t exactly a guy you could go to when you kept having dreams about plane crashes and falling from train cars and endless ice.” _I want to give you everything I never got, everything that HYDRA never gave you when they woke you up and read you your orders._

 _I want to save you this time_.

Bucky is silent, considering this. Steve was alone when he woke up. No Bucky or Peggy or Commandos to make things easier, to help him breathe through the nightmares and ease the endless ache set deep within his heart. And now Bucky is truly awake for the first time in 70 odd years and here is Steve to hold him and help him and drag him from the wreckage. “What did you miss most,” he asks. His voice is hoarse, strained. “When you woke up?”

Steve’s hair is mussed, he runs his fingers through it again, and the blond hairs stand at attention in complete disarray. “I missed knowing what my purpose was – I missed the people I loved best.” He sighs. “I missed being _Steve_. When I woke up, the only thing people cared about was Captain America, and, well, Steve Rogers kinda got left by the wayside. I’m still trying to remember who he was, who I am.” The shield, bloodstained and gashed, dropped in the Siberian snow – Captain America is dead.

Bucky knows a thing or two about trying to reconstruct an identity, wondering where the Soldier ends and where Bucky begins and what this new patchwork of selves is meant to be. “A good man,” Bucky mumbles, a smile pulling at his lips. “Kind. Stubborn as hell. But you always had the biggest heart, and you were strong. Stronger than I could ever be, even though you looked like a stiff wind coulda blown you over. I remembered you before I even remembered _myself_.” And then they made him forget. Again. 500 volts and trigger words…

He reaches across Steve’s lap, flips through the pages of the forgotten sketchbook. There are disembodied hands with blunt and calloused fingers, Wanda’s heart-shaped face, the lines and angles of the Black Panther mask, arms corded with thick muscle. An ear, eyelashes fanned out across a cheek, a scruffy jaw and lax, full mouth, the slope of a nose and fall of hair. Over and over again, pieces of Bucky strewn across the thick vellum pages.

The tips of Steve’s ears are glowing pink, the flush high on his cheekbones. “I didn’t want to leave you alone for long, and there wasn’t much else to do…”

There is tenderness in each line of the pencil, care in every highlight and shadow – these are loving details. “I used to sit for you, didn’t I?” Before. “So you could practice.”

“Yeah, you did. You were a surprisingly patient model – you’d just sit and talk for hours while I worked. Always insisted I make sure to capture your good side,” Steve chuckles. “You know I’ve still never managed to quite get the hang of hands, though.”

Bucky is not smiling now. The page is a mangle of metal and scar tissue in stark relief, the knot of his shoulder truncated and spliced with plate metal and gears. He traces his flesh-and-blood fingers over the page, acutely aware of his loss – the weight that is absent from his left side. “It looks…” He worries his lip between his teeth. “Brutal. Painful.”

“Is it?” The little knot of worry has reappeared between Steve’s eyebrows and Bucky thinks he’s never had anyone look at him so kindly, with so much tenderness. “Painful?”

“Sometimes,” Bucky admits. “It was never something I noticed when they took me out for missions, but after… When I was free. It was heavy and compensating for the weight messed up my back pretty good. The… scar tissue hurts the most though, where it’s integrated with the arm…” He bunches up the short sleeve of his t-shirt, dragging it up to reveal the angry purple twists and gnarls of scar tissue. “I don’t know why you’d draw it – it’s not exactly pretty to look at.” Bucky’s eyes are tired, resigned.

“Doesn’t matter if it’s pretty,” Steve says “it’s a part of you. All the good and the bad.” And he snags his thumb in the material of Bucky’s shirt, pushes it back, and presses a feather-light kiss to the muscle and metal. “C’mere.”

“Steve…” _Don’t waste your heartache on me_.

“Buck, you’ve got knots upon knots in your shoulder – it’s no wonder it’s painful.” Steve rearranges himself on the edges of the bed, tugging Bucky into the cradle of his arms. He kisses the scar again, rests his forehead against Bucky’s tense shoulder. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

The first press of his fingers into the sore, knotty tissue makes Bucky _melt_. It’s a lifetime of tension built up in his muscles, etched onto his bones and Steve digs his thumb into thick tissue and works it slow and careful. Steve’s hands circle the stump of metal and wires, covered by black mesh, kneading and pressing as Bucky groans and sags back against his chest.

“That’s it,” Steve soothes. “There we go.” And his long fingers that have made art and killed men drag the pain from Bucky’s muscles, gentling the spasms and the aches. He kisses the scars again. “Just breathe, Bucky – I’ve got you.”

And he does. He has Bucky’s whole world, his entire fragile and broken heart held in his big, gentle hands and Bucky has never felt safer. He wants Steve to know this feeling, of being encompassed, of complete and utter safety. When everything is said and done tomorrow – if he is saved – his final mission will be simply this: to save Steve Rogers. He will enlist Sam to help. Even the former Captain’s shoulders can only bear so much weight, and Bucky is prepared to shoulder all of it, he will steal the shadows from Steve’s eyes and the sadness from his smile and he will bear the weight so that Steve does not have to. Bucky has dragged the ball-and-chain of his own sins for so long he thinks that he will not even notice the extra weight upon his soul. And if he does, if it drags him down and drowns him – it will be worth it to restore some of the sunshine to Steve’s eyes.

The captain’s fingers trace curlicues and figure eights through the material of Bucky’s t-shirt. “Whatever happens tomorrow, Buck, however things go with Wanda and your implant…” Steve takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“If something goes wrong, you say the triggers,” Bucky snaps. “You say the words and you force me to comply or you let them put me down. I’d rather be wiped again or dead than risk doing something to hurt you or any of the others.”

“Bucky…”

He closes his eyes and makes himself as small as possible against Steve. “Nothing will go wrong… Nothing will go wrong. But you have to promise me – promise that you won’t let me hurt anyone…”

“I promise.” Steve wrenches it from somewhere deep and unhappy

“Good,” Bucky whispers. “Now, stay with me? Just for a little while longer…”

Steve’s response, muffled in Bucky’s hair sounds suspiciously like “forever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ye gods, this is a long one. But nothing actually happens in it!!!
> 
> Inspiration for the arm moment: http://springroove.tumblr.com/post/144616319784/two-things-1-i-like-the-idea-of-steve-smooching


	6. Chapter 6

“Steve?” Sam raps his knuckles against the bathroom door. It feels like an intrusion, standing in Bucky’s pristine white room as hitching breaths and retching sounds echo from behind the locked door. “The room’s all set up and ready to go – you two all right in there?” He hesitates. “You want me to get the doctors?”

“ _No more doctors!_ ” Bucky’s voice through the door is shredded, raw-sounding.

The door slides open with a hydraulic hiss, revealing a harried looking Steve whose short hair stands wildly on end, something crumbling in his expression. “Sam.” _Help._ Behind him, Bucky Barnes is hunched on the white tile floor, head hanging over the toilet bowl as his shoulders quake and spasm.

“How long has he been like this?” Sam’s hand is on Steve’s shoulder, nudging him out of the doorway.

Steve backs up against the sink, letting Sam press into the space – it is not a small bathroom by any means, but three decent sized men crammed in together is enough to make it feel just the wrong side of claustrophobic. “All morning,” Steve doesn’t manage to keep the tremor from his voice. “He didn’t sleep at all, and he’s been shaking like a leaf – he was throwing up bile at first, but God, there’s nothing left in him.”

Sam nods, crouching so that he is eye-to-eye with Bucky who leans his whole weight against the cool porcelain of the toilet. “Steve, wet one of the towels in the sink for me, would you? Nice and cold.” He ghosts his palm over the curve of Bucky’s shoulders, feeling the fine, helpless shudders. “All right, JB, talk to me.”

Bucky spits. “No.” His mouth is sharp with the tang of bile, mucus thick on his tongue. The truth sits there on the edge of his tongue, so heavy. He does not speak – will not risk their revulsion, their pity, or disdain.

“Aw, c’mon man,” Sam says “don’t be like that.” There is no bite to the words, though, and his hands are gentle as he eases Bucky away from the toilet bowl, straightening his back, brushing the sweaty stray hairs from his eyes. The drum of water in the sink basin ceases to a trickle and Sam takes the cool cloth from Steve, draping it across Bucky’s nape. “You’ve got to work with me here, JB, okay?”

Bucky swallows another wave of nausea, risks a look at Sam who watches him with those inscrutable, kind eyes. Steve stands behind him, big and uncertain, his face all screwed up, the slash of his mouth pressed into a fine line. They are both such good, honest men – Bucky doesn’t know what they’re doing wasting time on the likes of him. “Okay,” he whispers.

“Good.” A fraction of stress melts from their faces. Sam rubs circles between Bucky’s shoulder blades as he speaks. “Can you tell me what’s got you puking up your insides? Is it biological or psychological?” Sam’s mouth twists. “Because, if it’s biological, we’re gonna need an actual doctor.”

“No.” Bucky shakes his head, fast and hard, the tremors starting again in his core, working their way through his peripheral nervous system with uneasy shudders. “It’s… psychological. I guess.”

“Easy does it,” Sam says, feeling the shivers under Bucky’s skin. “C’mon down here Steve and hold his hand or something, would you?”

And Steve does, wedging himself into the crevice between Bucky and the bathtub. He doesn’t just take Bucky’s flesh hand, though, but wraps his whole self around the shaking form as though he could envelop Bucky entirely, hide him away from the world and all of his old hurts. “I’ve got you,” he soothes. “You’re okay.”

Bucky grinds his teeth and presses his eyes shut, but he does not manage to shake his way out of his body and he starts to feel a little less like screaming. “Sorry,” he says between his teeth. “I’m sorry…”

“Nothing you need to be sorry for,” Sam says as he dampens another washcloth, scrubbing the snot and tears and bile from Bucky’s crumpled face. “Is this about deactivating the HYDRA implant?”

Bucky nods, feels Steve’s arms squeeze him tighter. The truth is a sour, unfortunate thing in his mouth. “I don’t exactly have a good history with medical procedures.” Too many memories. Splintering, throbbing – grinding down his bones. The _whoosh_ of the soldering iron, plate metal sealed into his skin. He remembers the fog of anesthesia the first time, how they spent an hour trying to get to take, to put him under. It was wasted time, wasted effort – they never bothered with it after. He would stare with wide eyes at his flayed open insides, slick and red and beating raw, and he would scream and scream and scream. At least, until they’d trained that part out of him too.

He feels Steve’s response more than he hears it, a gentle rumble against his back. “We’re not gonna let anything happen to you, Buck.”

“I know.” And he does know – Steve and Sam will not let anything happen to him, they will not let him hurt or be hurt. Wanda and T’Challa and Clint will be there, they will not let anything happen. He will be safe and strapped down and Wanda will pick his brain apart with those gentle, flaming fingers and they will take care of him. He will be safe. He will be okay. But the dark, niggling remains of the Soldier in his marrow scream.

 _They will tear you apart and turn you into ruins_.

He stands, brushes his teeth while Sam and Steve hover – two steady pairs of eyes on his shoulders – and allows himself to be led through the maze of whitewashed corridors. It is hard not to imagine the lamb being led to slaughter, an executioners block awaiting him in the operating theater.

But Steve leads. So he will follow.

They are waiting in the amphitheater, a huddle of nervous energy and last minute preparations. “Captain,” T’Challa says with a nod. “Sergeant Barnes. Mister Wilson. Everything is ready to proceed.” He reaches out, clasps Bucky’s single hand in both of his own dry palms. “I have offered prayers to my gods on your behalf, that you might find some measure of peace when this is done.”

Bucky remembers the burning in T’Challa’s voice, the bloodthirsty conviction. The tears he has only just managed to keep in check threaten to spill over, welling in his throat. This same man has prayed for him, has offered him forgiveness and a safe haven. Even if he lived a thousand lifetimes, Bucky thinks he could never make up the debt. “Thank you,” he says. It sounds like pebbles in a blender, churned and hoarse after nights of screaming and a morning of bile.

T’Challa’s smile is small but heartfelt. “I will leave you to prepare.”

Steve’s hand on his elbow guides Bucky into the middle of the room where the rest of the Avengers huddle, consulting in low, thoughtful tones. Bucky watches his white slippers shuffle across the marbled tiles. There are no telling rust-brown stains in the grout between the tiles and he reminds himself _this is not like HYDRA. They never let me wear slippers, the rooms were never this clean, Steve was never there_.

This time, things will be better.

He tries not to flinch when Clint pats his good shoulder as he passes, grunts in response to Scott’s surprisingly kind “we’re rooting for you, man”, and all the while his flesh hand clutches at the pulse-point in Steve’s wrist.

Then Wanda approaches. She is dressed in loose layers of red and black, her hair pulled sharply back to accentuate the planes of her heart-shaped face and there is dark kohl smudged around the edges of her eyes, but these things do nothing to hide the sweetness in her features, the youth written so plainly there. “Steve,” she says, “Sam. Bucky?”

The firm, low lilt of her voice sparks the faintest of smiles on Bucky’s lips. He tilts his head just enough to glance out of the corner of his eye. “Hey,” he rasps.

She grins, sticks out a hand. “We were never properly introduced.” Her fingernails are painted with chipped, black lacquer. “I’m Wanda Maximoff.”

He grasps her little hand and shakes it, careful. He could break her fingers without flinching. “Bucky Barnes.” He eyes the examiner’s chair with its black padding and vibranium reinforcements. “If we’re going to do this, you should probably restrain me.”

Steve makes a little noise of protest.

Sam says “you sure, JB?”

Bucky considers it. Strapped down and screaming, snapping his teeth at anyone who came near as they cut him open and stitched him together, splicing metal into his bones. “I killed at least a dozen HYDRA scientists who got too close. It’s safer this way.”

He steps toward the chair.

"Wait!” Wanda catches him by the arm, and Bucky jerks like he’s been scalded. Her green eyes are steady, the full lips firmly set. “I need you to be very, very certain about this. If you have even a bit of doubt we will call it all off right now.” She is so much like _Steve_ , so fierce and good. “You will be very vulnerable. Raw. All of your memories, your fears, and your dreams will be laid bare to me.”

Bucky shrugs. “What’s one more pair of hands picking my brain apart?”

“Buck…”

Wanda’s expression goes flat. Stern. “I do not need machines to wipe your mind and strip away your autonomy. I could do this with a flick of my fingers.”

 _Jesus Christ._ He swallows, lets the dusty Sokovian dialect tumble from his tongue. “ _Osim toga, ja ne mislim da bi ovo uradio_.” I don’t think you would do this.

“ _Ne znaš me_ ,” she says. _You don’t know me_.

Bucky forces himself to lift his head, to look into her upturned face. “Steve trusts you,” he says. “Sam trusts you. That’s good enough for me.” He turns, finds Steve over his shoulder and nods once. Firm. “I’m ready.”

Sam squeezes his shoulder. “I’ll let you two have a minute. Good luck, kid.” And then he’s out the door too and Bucky imagines that the space behind his right shoulder is suddenly much colder for the loss.

“Steve?” It’s small and plaintive on his lips.

There’s a big hand on his elbow, guiding him toward the chair and his heart has leapt up into his throat, hammering behind his hyoid bone and they will open up his mind, and Wanda will know, and, and, and…

Steve spins him around and hauls him close so that he cannot see the chair, cannot think of electrodes and mind-wiping and pain. He only knows the pounding of Steve’s heart, the solidness of his chest, his detergent-and-beeswax smell.

This is okay. This is safe – this is the end of his own, silent purgatory. “I’m okay,” he mumbles into Steve’s shoulder. “I’ll be okay.”

And Steve cups his scruffy, blotchy face in both of his hands, pressing a quick hard kiss to Bucky’s temple. “Yes you will,” he whispers. His breath a ghost against flushed cheeks. “You will.”

Because the alternative is failure, is that Bucky is damaged beyond repair. Because Steve only just got him back and he won’t survive losing him again.

They strap him down and Steve’s fingertips linger just a moment too long and Bucky swallows his heart back down as Steve disappears behind the glass. Then it’s just Wanda, standing over him with kind eyes and a hard set to her mouth.

"Ready?” she asks.

“Do your worst.”

The little red will o’ wisps whirl between her fingertips. She whispers and her irises _burn_ , and when she touches her cool fingertips to his temples – right where Steve’s kiss lingers – Bucky burns too.

He is back in the darkness. It is there behind his eyelids, seared into his skull. “ _My name is James Buchanan Barnes_.” And they beat it out of him. He has no name, no home, no self. They scoop out his innards, carve him up and reshape him. They write new programs in binary on his bones and reorganize his brain with 500 volts.

He remembers. Maybe it was days or weeks or years after they sealed him in the dark – the _snick-snick_ of silver shears. Thick dark hair falling in clumps, curling in his lap. Blood and blinding pain, and he knows with sick, awful certainty that if they parted his hair just the right way they would find the thin, white scars.

They shoved the monster in, sealed it inside his skull.

"Please,” Wanda’s voice through the black-and-red haze. He tastes blood. “Please, James, you need to calm down.”

 _James_. James – he is not James. He is Bucky. He is the Soldier. He is a monster… he has no name. No soul. They took that from him, too.

Wanda’s hands are on his temples, but there are phantom fingers pushing rubber bite guards between his teeth, prying open eyeballs, and leaving half-moon nail marks in his skin. The memory of bruises, broken bones and bloody wounds, of rough hands that open him up, striking his face and tearing his hair, leaving him gaping and empty and violated.

 _You’re safe, James._ Wanda’s voice rings hollow against his skull.

His brain cells are burning, bursting in little firework displays…

Somewhere, far away, his body is shaking, seizing, screaming. It throws itself against the restraints and snaps its teeth. “ _It hurts_!” And there is a juggernaut bursting through the doors, a cacophony of noise and scrambling feet against the tiles.

“That’s enough, Wanda!” Steve, whose face is twisted and painful. Whose breath snarls from his lungs. “Shut it down!”

There are sooty, mascara tear-tracks down Wanda’s cheeks. She presses her eyes shut but the screams keep rising and the memories burn behind her eyes as she whispers “just a little more. It’s almost over.”

And Sam – brave, breakable Sam – presses him back, palm to chest. “Steve,” he says, half-crouched, prepared to plant himself and push. “If she stops now, it’ll kill him.”

“It’s already killing him!” Steve trembles with emotion, the flush high on his cheekbones and boiling in his blood. The tears come in earnest, rolling wet and heavy down his cheeks. “Please, please God…” _Don’t take him from me again_.

This is it. God’s will be done. Bucky screams and screams and screams until his skull cracks and his brain puddles out between his ears. _Make it stop!_

And Wanda throws her leg across his thrashing belly, straddles him and presses him down with all her might. “Do _not_ fight me.” She digs her blazing fingers into the old pains, the thick-scarred over grey matter and gives one last good, strong push and Bucky’s head _explodes_. A vicious white-lightning display behind his eyes, overloading his neurons, bursting in the confines of his skull. And it’s _done_. It’s done, it’s over and Bucky’s eyes roll back in his head and he is _gone_.

“No, no, no – don’t you do this!”

And Steve folds. His knees hit the ground and a moan drags itself from his lips and he intones in a dead, broken voice “ _Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra_ …”

The forest-fire blaze of magic melts away in a litany of Sokovian curses, frantic and spitting mad. The restraints are gone. Little, sweaty hands haul him up and press his face into lily white collarbones, a caged-bird heartbeat racing against his ear. “Is okay,” Wanda soothes. “It’s over now.”

Slowly, so slowly, he finds a pulse. Breathes. Remembers how to live beyond the agony that presses behind his eyes, the dull throb of pain through his cranium. “Say it,” he croaks.

“What?” Sam, bewildered.

His head is heavy, so damn heavy but he drags himself upright. “The triggers,” his voice is shot all to hell, roughed up and raw as sandpaper. “Say the words.”

“Bucky.” Steve chokes.

“ _Say it_!” He begs. “I have to know, Steve.”

Is he saved?

And Steve will go to the ends of the earth for Bucky. He is prepared to do the impossible, to sacrifice anything and everything – but he cannot find his voice. Blotchy-faced, streaked with tears, he looks away from Bucky with his mouth gaping and the words dying on his lips.

Wanda slides off Bucky's lap like silk, her green eyes grave. She drags a knuckle across his cheek, catches the remnants of a teardrop there. “ _Zhelaniye_.”

He braces himself, digs his fingers into the padding of the chair. Oh Jesus.

“ _Rzhavvy_ ,” Sam’s accent is awkward, spoken through the nose, but he is there to pick up the thread, to drag Steve up off the floor and brace him as he sways. For all that he has wings, the man more resembles stone – even as the world crumbles around them, he has become their firm foundation. “ _Semnadtsat’_.”

There is no white-lightning in his brain, no stink of burning hair. He does not scream.

“ _Rassvet_.” Steve has found some untapped reserve of strength – that last bright and stubborn spark that Bucky knows so well. He had it memorized back in Brooklyn, saw it flashing in the gunfire explosions of occupied Europe. He remembers it from the bridge, the helicarrier, Romania. Siberia. “ _Pech’_.”

Bucky’s vision is grey, his chest tight – he holds his breath, squeezes his eyes shut and prays. _Please. Please don’t let Steve down_. He cannot hope for his own sake anymore, but Steve deserves better. Steve is worth a miracle.

“ _Devyat’_ ,” Steve puts one foot in front of the other and the rest of the world is falling away. There is only his heartbeat in his ears and Bucky huddled in the examiner’s chair and the tremulous, fragile hope that swells between them. “ _Dobroserdechnyy_.”

The hands that cup Bucky’s face are cool, rough-edged and he remembers clotted blood and bruised knuckles and broken fingers from punching too hard, too often. Fingertips slide under his chin, tipping his head back. Steve looks him in the eye – all blue and grey and green – as he says “ _vozvrashcheniye na rodinu_.”

Bucky cries silently, with his eyes wide open, the tears slick and smearing on his cheeks. He can do this…

“ _Odin_ ,” Steve breathes. There is no space left between them and Bucky’s breath catches, hitching in his lungs for a whole new reason. “ _Gruzovoy vagon_.” And he presses their foreheads together, crushes Bucky close and trembles. _Please, please don’t go. Stay with me._

Bucky does not move.

 _No_. Steve draws back, a fraction of an inch, dreading the blank black look in those big grey eyes. “ _S-soldat_?”

“Fuck that.” And Bucky surges upright, crushes his face into Steve’s collarbone and _laughs_. He could die happy now, safe in Steve’s arms with those strong whole hands tangled in his hair. A free man. “Steve…”

It’s the smallest sound, a breathless little gasp that bursts from Steve’s very soul, and it’s _painful_ to hear. “Don’t let go,” he breathes. The words stir and catch in Bucky’s hair. “Don’t you ever let go of me.”

And Bucky digs his fingers in, hard enough to bruise. He remembers sweaty, slipping fingers and the burning in his arms. The gloved hand reaching, begging him “just hold on” and the lurch of his heart as their fingertips only just brushed and fell away. He will never forget the disbelief, the open-mouthed scream and Steve thinking _too late, too damn late_.

Come hell or high water, Bucky is not letting go now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come cry with me about Bucky Barnes on my Tumblr - fictionilly.tumblr.com :)
> 
> Another HUGE thank you to spellitwithyourpeas for being amazing in every possible way. She helps me work through the plot snarls, provides such great insight, and sits with me in the grass and sunshine and listens while I cry about James Buchanan Barnes <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***TRIGGER WARNING: DIRECT REFERENCE TO RAPE IN THIS CHAPTER PLEASE PROCEED ACCORDINGLY FOLKS***
> 
> Bucky does not seem to understand that "deactivated implant" does not equal "all your issues and PTSD magically disappear".
> 
> According to some interviews, Sokovian was based on the Serbian language – so I’m using Serbian Google Translate which is probably 40% wrong. Please feel free to correct me if you are so inclined.

Bucky is sweaty, the muscles in his shoulders bunched and aching, but the strain of it all feels so worthwhile and yet too fragile to truly last. Like a hundred-pound weight has been lifted, the shadow of a threat sloughed off and scrubbed away – they said the trigger words. _And they didn’t work_.

It feels like a miracle, like more than he could possibly deserve. All he can think is _I have been unshackled._ At last. Thank God.

When will the other shoe finally drop? When does he wake up to discover this was only a dream? What happens when HYDRA takes him back and wipes him clean?

His heart gives a horrible, lurching quaver.

“Hey, JB,” Sam’s eyes twinkle in the fluorescent lights. He is open, the emotion written plain across his joyous face. “You all right for touchy-feely crap?”

“Uh.”

And then Bucky’s chin is mashed into Sam’s shoulder and there are palms splayed against his back as Sam gives him a quick, hard squeeze.

“I’m glad I was wrong about you, kid,” Sam says in his ear. “You’re gonna be just fine.”

Bucky has to take a minute, then, to remember how to breathe without the air snarling up in his lungs and hitching at the back of his throat. This is a man who is smart, whose job it is to know and understand people, to mend their cracks and piece together their broken bits. And he thinks Bucky is okay, that he is salvageable.

It’s a ringing endorsement if ever there was one.

“Thank you.”

And then Steve, who has been conferring with T’Challa - their heads bent and expressions eager – is all Bucky can see, big and golden and beaming bright enough to rival the sun itself. “I can hardly believe it,” he says with his nose pressed against Bucky’s temple. “How does it feel?”

Impossible. Incomprehensible. “Like a miracle,” Bucky says. Like standing on the edge of a great precipice and wondering if I have the courage to jump. It is exhilarating, and it is completely unknown and he is scared out of his mind.

What happens now?

T’Challa is smiling his small, crooked grin. “Congratulations, Sergeant Barnes,” he says. “We will perform some scans to be certain that the implant can no longer generate any disruptive electrical output, but it appears you are now a free man.”

Bucky ducks his head, hides behind his thick dark hair. “I… don’t think I ever repay you for what you’ve done, your highness.” Everything is too bright, there are too many people, so many voices…

“Please,” T’Challa holds up a hand. “Among my friends I am only T’Challa. And it will be repayment enough to see you healed.” He tilts his head and the wattage of his smile dims. “Besides, it allows me a chance to make amends.”

The flash of claws; air whistling by, too close. _Barnes is mine_.

Bucky shudders, feels his teeth chatter. His eyes catch on the silent little body that has settled on the edge of the examiner’s chair. She doesn’t look good. “Excuse me,” he mutters.

Wanda is very quiet and very pale, a sheen of sweat on her upper lip, but she manages a smile – shy and earnest – for Bucky when he turns to her. She has scrubbed at her cheeks, wiped away the worst of the gluey mascara trails, but she looks haggard.

In comparison his face, before pulled so hard and tight with tension, seems soft and slack and gentle. The grey eyes droop ever-so-slightly and he sways a little on his feet. His hand trembles where it swings against his thigh. “You look like maybe I should bring you a bucket to puke in,” Bucky says, tilting his head. “That was… intense.”

She hadn’t even realized that she was holding her breath, but now it sighs out of her and takes most of her remaining strength with it. “Yes,” she agrees, adjusting her perch on the creaky vinyl cushions. “Yes – are you…? I know it was not easy for you. Are you all right?”

His smile is fragile, stunted, but when it lingers on his lips and in his eyes, Wanda thinks that this re-forged, renewed Bucky Barnes is just a bit beautiful. “I was going to ask you the same question,” he admits. “I know it was kind of a shit-show up in here,” and he taps a finger against his temple. The light-hearted humor in his voice wavers, barely more than a smoke screen. He swallows hard. “What you did… I just – thank you.”

It’s hard to put it into words, the swelling in his chest, the overwhelming relief that makes his whole body limp and languid. It sticks in his throat and wells behind his eyes, this utter inability to convey his gratitude.

But Wanda understands. “You are welcome.”

He gnaws at his bottom lip, the whites of his eyes wide and rolling. His head spins. “The things you saw… in my head. I…” Bucky swallows hard, tastes bile. “I’m sorry you had to see. But…” And here is face crumbles, agonized, and the grey eyes implore her. “Steve doesn’t need to know about it. He’s already got enough to deal with – I don’t want him to think… He needs me to be okay now.”

 _Oh, drag čovek, you and ‘okay’ do not even share the same postal code._ She studies him, her face lit with kindness and sorrow, and in a low tone says “you’ve been through hell. It’s okay for you to not be okay.” She wrinkles her nose. The phrasing is all wrong.

He grunts, lifts his eyebrows.

“Barnes.” She lays her little hand over his wrist, squeezes the warm pulse point there. “You can’t just sweep it under the rug and move on – no one expects you to.” Wanda lowers her voice, leans in close. “ _Za sedamdeset godina ste propatili_. _Ti si silovane, mučene, a oni pocepala um na komade_.” For seventy years you suffered. You were raped, tortured, and they tore your mind to shreds.

“ _Imate svako pravo da se razbije_.” You have every right to be broken.

His throat jerks, a hard compulsive swallow. The tremors start, uncurling in his belly and spreading beneath his skin, small after-shocks that jar his limbs. “ _Stvari koje su polomljene su odbačene,_ ” he replies. Things that are broken are discarded. “I have to be okay.” Otherwise, there is no point. They will see that all of their efforts to save him were wasted, that he is ruined beyond repair, and they will cast him aside like a broken plate.

Wanda fixes him with those big hazel eyes, sets her full mouth into a grim line. “Because of Steve,” she murmurs. “Because you love him.”

Bucky makes a terrified, choked-off noise. _I can’t lose him_. “If you tell him…” _If he finds out, he’ll leave._

She mimes locking her lips, tossing the imaginary key over one shoulder. “I will say nothing – but if you think what happened to you will make Steve love you any less, then you are an idiot.”

The tremors grow worse.

He should be happy, relieved – it’s over now. HYDRA has no more hold on him. But he remembers… he remembers everything they did to him and everything he did unto others and he’s supposed to be fixed.

“Bucky?” Wanda’s voice, rising with panic.

 _Damnit – what’s wrong with him?!_ He should be better now. But his skin feels peeled off and his nerves are raw and he thinks that maybe Wanda didn’t fix the implant after all because there is so much static in his brain…

“I’ve got him, Wanda.” Steve’s hand is big and warm, pressed suddenly between his shoulder blades. “Maybe we should find someplace quiet for a bit, huh?”

He manages to nod, puts one foot in front of the other and shuffles after Steve who tows him along past Clint and Sam and the Wakandan scientists. Sam gives them a look and sets his jaw, prepared to cover their hasty exit.

 _Oh Jesus, oh shit, oh no_ … He’s supposed to be okay… He’s not supposed to be going to pieces right after they put him back together…

The glass doors whoosh shut and he is hit by warm, humid air. He breathes and it is heavy in his lungs, thick and damp, and brilliant yellow sunshine spills soft across his shoulders. _Breathe_ , he reminds himself. _This is what it’s like to feel alive_.

He has always loved the sun.

Before – before, he used to spend every free moment soaking up the rays; sitting out on the fire escape, stripping off his sweat-stale shirt at the docks, lying on the beach. He remembers marching, miles and miles across Europe with his face upturned and the darkness melting away for an hour while the orange sunshine glowed behind his eyes.

He used to tan then, too. And then they locked him in cryo tanks, hid him in the darkness, buried him underground and his skin forgot what it felt like. Then the Soldier was let out and he burned – red and raw and peeling, and he had vague memories of skinny white shoulders and tissue paper strips of dead skin lifted away with the utmost care.

“That’s it,” Steve is whispering, smoothing his palms up and down Bucky’s shoulders, the stump of his arm. “That’s it, just take a breather – okay, Buck?”

“Okay.” And he pitches forward, presses his face into Steve’s chest. With his nose mashed against super-soldier sternum he screws up his eyes and focuses every fiber of his being on Steve’s heartbeat against his cheek. _Stop it – they fixed you. You’re better now. Stop being such a wuss-ass, Barnes._ “M’sorry.”

Steve shifts, braces his lower back against the balcony railing and hugs Bucky tighter. “Got nothin’ to be sorry for,” he mumbles into Bucky’s hair. “We’re just going to take a minute out here, let you sort yourself out.” Knuckles drag up and down the nodules of Bucky’s spine. “You’re okay now. Everything’s okay.”

 _Oh, Steve,_ he thinks. _How wrong you are._


	8. Chapter 8

It seems almost fitting, in a way, when Bucky catches himself in a reflection and sees the empty space where his left arm should be. On the days when he is sullen and prickly and doesn’t know whether to lash out or cry in a corner he imagines it is a truly ghastly metaphor.

He is mismatched, these two halves of him no longer aligned – the Bucky from before, and Bucky now. And even without the glaring, shiny-chrome reminder of his sins he knows; he cannot ever be the same.

For Steve’s sake he tries. He smiles at Wanda, jokes with Clint and Scott. He knows Sam can see right through the act, is trained to be able to do just that – but they never discuss it.

T’Challa offers to build a new arm. Wakanda is the most technologically advanced country in the world, he could do it with ease. An arm made of vibranium, light and durable and deadly? One with pistons and gears and wires hidden by synthetic flesh? It could be done, Bucky’s seen the schematics.

He doesn’t know that he even _wants_ a new arm, though. He doesn’t want to ‘look normal’ or be retrofitted with another weapon – instead he lets the empty space remain at his side, a visceral reminder. Before. And After.

But he forgets sometimes, and feels the phantom sensations of a limb. So when he trips over something hunched and hard and vaguely human in the common area at an ungodly hour of the night, he throws out the nonexistent arm to catch himself and instead becomes intimately acquainted with the floorboards. “What the hell,” he says at the same time the ankle-breaker says “Jesus Christ”.

Bucky blinks. His eyes have adjusted to the jungle moonlight filtering in through the windows and the body on the floor takes a familiar shape. “Sam,” he says mildly. “Why are you sitting on the floor in the dark at two in the morning?”

“Says the one PTSD-riddled insomniac to the other,” Sam scoffs, but his voice is thick and wet.

It’s true, Bucky has no room to judge. They’ve found him holed up at all hours in any number of strange places when he’s feeling fragile. But he isn’t judging, just… _concerned_. Maybe. Is that what it is?

“Don’t worry about it, Barnes.”

They like their nicknames, the Avengers. For the most part he is Bucky, with Steve he is just Buck. JB slips out sometimes, although he put a stop to James real fast. He is only Barnes when they are stressed, it comes out clipped and short-tempered.

“Don’t bullshit me, Wilson.” Bucky picks himself up off the floor, sits so that the curve of his spine is braced against the wall, arm draped over his knees. Oh, he is so completely out of his depth. His insides feel like jelly, all uneasy and quivering, and his nerves vibrate beneath his skin, but he asks anyway “do you want to talk about it?” The question is too hesitant, too halting – it sounds stupid and useless and it makes Bucky want to bang a head-sized hole in the plaster.

Sam obviously thinks it’s stupid too, considering the way he snorts and tips his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Nah,” he says. “I’d rather stay here on the goddamn floor and think about what I want to do until the moment’s over and I end up doing nothing about it at all.”

He sounds so exhausted, so bitter that Bucky’s heart pangs hollow against his sternum. There has to be a way to fix this, to heal whatever open wound is festering in the forefront of Sam’s mind – but Bucky is only used to leaving wounds, to having his own pain cauterized by a well-timed memory wipe. He is no good at fixing broken things.

“Wait here,” he says, as though Sam might go anywhere else with his eyes all wet and blotchy and the breath catching in the back of his throat.

Bucky pads back across the common area, outlined in the blue-white shafts of moonlight. The light from the palm print scanner sears his retinas, a quick LED flare that leaves him blinking away bright spots as the door rolls open with a whoosh.

He knows the layout of Steve’s suite better than he knows his own. The first night out of cryo he had spent an hour lurking at the end of the bed, watching Steve’s big wide chest rise and fall, and reassuring himself that they were alive. They were all right. And of course Steve had woken up under the weight of those solemn eyes, had blinked at him all bleary and sleep-addled, and then patted the mattress in silent invitation.

The weight of Steve’s arm around his middle is nothing like the restraints on HYDRA’s electric chairs and examination tables.

Now Bucky shuffles his feet through the plush carpet, makes just enough noise so that Steve shifts and grumbles beneath the sheets. Bucky wishes he could draw at times like this, when Steve is still and the worried furrows between his eyebrows have slackened. He hates to wake him, to ruin his brief and fragile peace. “Steve?” He trails his fingers up Steve’s big warm arm, gives his shoulder a push. “Steve, wake up.”

“Buck?” He rolls over, gives a great heavy sigh and scrubs a hand across his face. “Bucky, hey – what’s the matter?”

He wraps his fingers around Steve’s wrist and tugs. “Need you,” he mumbles. “Sam needs help.”

And that gets Steve right out of bed. “What do you mean Sam needs help?” he demands, throwing back the blankets. “Is he hurt? What’s going on?”

“Just c’mon.” Bucky tugs his arm again and the pair of them, tall and broad, shuffle back into the common area.

Sam sits hunched against the wall, one knee drawn up to his chest, and watches as Steve’s short wild hair catches the moonlight, forms a crown of silvery cowlicks. “Damn it, JB,” he says “you gonna wake everyone for this?”

Bucky’s big grey eyes are bright, cat-like and sad when they reflect the light. “If that’s what’s necessary.” He sits back, breathing deep and slow. “You know, Steve’s been emotionally constipated since the day he was born.”

Steve makes a little, offended sound. Sam snorts.

“Like pulling teeth getting him to talk about things – but I was always good at getting it out of him, making him open up,” Bucky curls his knees up to his chest, traces patterns on the floorboards with his fingers. “And now? I’m not so good, anymore… for a long time I forgot what emotions even felt like.” He shrugs. “So, you’ve got yourself two of the shittiest therapists in the known world, Wilson. Spill.”

Steve manages to shake off the last vestiges of sleep, a giant lump of blond superhuman who stares at Sam and Bucky – who mean more than the world to him – with his face all twisted up in earnest concern. “Seriously, Sam,” he murmurs. “What’s going on?”

Sam breathes hard out his nose, head tipped back against the wall. “It’s seven o’clock in DC right now,” he says. “My niece, she always goes to bed at seven-thirty. And today’s her birthday – the big double digits – and I was thinking I’d call and try to catch her, wish her a happy birthday because I’m a good uncle like that. But I can’t. What would I even say? I can’t answer their questions, and calling puts them at risk.” He shakes his head and his voice trembles. “I know I signed up for this, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat Steve, but being an internationally wanted fugitive is _hard shit_ , man.”

It’s one thing to know what will happen, another thing to live it. To see Rhodes fall from the sky, images of Riley exploding superimposed over the view as he hurtled back toward the earth, still too late, too late.

And then the police swarming the airfield… They had slammed him down on the tarmac and wrenched the cuffs tight around his wrists and he had gone quietly, because he did not want to think about what might happen if he so much as flinched wrong – a bullet in the head because he is automatically a threat. And then, when they were locked away on the RAFT, the guards had beaten him down with electrified bully clubs, had broken his nose and bloodied his lip and painted his body with mottled purple contusions and he had refused to tell them a damn thing.

Clint had been listless and sullen. Scott noisy, prepared to make a nuisance of himself if only to take the guard’s attention off the rest of them for a few moments. Wanda had sobbed her way through the first night, before the inhibitor collar burned her into submission. And Sam… he had been terrified. Had not slept, had paced round and round in circles while the tension built up between his shoulders and the fear chewed holes in his brain.

What would his mother think? Did his sisters know, yet? He imagined them huddled around the television, watching footage of the airfield fight. Did they know he was alive? That he was an internationally known criminal now? God, they would be horrified. They would weep. His mother would be furious…

Would he make it out alive? If he did, he would be stripped of his Air Force medals and honors. Would they try him in a military tribunal, would he even get a trial?

And the panic had built and built and bubbled over and he had never been so glad to see Steve in his entire life when the man emerged from the shadows in black civvies, trailing Natasha and a solemn-eyed James Buchanan Barnes who was just as deadly with one arm as he was with two.

Now, Bucky is completely still, all folded up on the floor and contemplative. “Tell me about it,” he says, but his eyes are huge and guilty and he stares like he can see Sam’s soul.

Steve says, “God, Sam, I’m so sorry. I never should’ve let you get dragged back into this, never should have let any of this happen…”

Sam holds up a hand, looking wrung out and miserable. “How many times am I going to have to have this discussion with you, man? Did you force me to go up against the Accords? Did you hold a gun to my head and make me give myself up so that you two could escape? Were you the one who stuck me in a floating prison hellhole? I don’t think so.” His dark eyes shine in the moonlight. “I made my own choices, man. You’re misplacing your guilt again.”

“He’s been doing that since the day he was born, too,” Bucky points out with a wry twist of his mouth. He unfolds himself in one silent, fluid motion and sways a bit when the lack of arm catches him off-balance. James Buchanan Barnes had always been graceful, light on his feet and in full command of every part of his body – but the way he moves across the common room in his pajamas and bare feet, dead silent, is all HYDRA training.

His palm print is only coded for access to Steve’s room, and so he pauses at the scanner outside Barton’s door and shoots a quick, nervous glance at the pair of them on the floor before he bends over and does something sneaky that makes the hydraulics hiss and the door slide silently open. He disappears inside.

“I’m going to be having a talk with him about that,” Steve says, worrying at his lower lip. He turns his attention back to Sam, still frowning. “Seriously, Sam – I’m… I’m sorry it ended up this way. I never wanted it to play out like this.”

“I know,” Sam sighs. “None of us did.”

Bucky reemerges then and the door slides back into place. There is something light about him, a weight lifted from his shoulders, and he pads back across the room to drop a slim black flip-phone into Sam’s lap. “Burner phone,” he says. “Call your niece, tell her happy birthday and that you love her – take five minutes and pretend to be normal again.”

“I… what…” Sam fumbles for a moment, stares at the phone like it might explode in his hand. An innocuous little lifeline. Something uncurls in his chest and he begins to breathe a bit easier. “Thank you.”

Bucky shrugs. “Better call soon, it’s almost seven-fifteen now.” He stares at them both for a moment, big-eyed and inscrutable and mumbles “I’m going to bed.”

Steve follows a moment later and Sam stares at the number on the screen and debates hitting ‘call’ while he listens to the pair of super soldiers shuffle about and Steve murmuring “that was a good thing you did for Sam”.

He takes the chance.

The phone rings once, twice, and then Danielle picks up. “ _Hello_?” She says, tinny and faraway and Sam could cry with happiness. “ _Who is this_?”

He swallows hard against the sob swelling in his throat, says in a watery, hesitant voice “hey Dani. It’s your big brother.”

Danielle’s squeal is loud enough that he’s sure Steve and Bucky hear it in their room. “ _Samuel Thomas Wilson_ ,” she cries. “ _We were so worried about you – what happened?! It was all over the news, the whole business with the Sokovian Accords and that bomb at the UN building… Are you okay?_ ” Her voice cracks. “ _Sammy, the news reports are saying you’re a fugitive. You and Cap and Scarlet Witch – mom and I have been calling and calling. The government offices, Stark Industries, everyone we could think of. It’s been_ months _, Sam_!”

He drops his head into his free hand, massages his temples. “I know, Dani. I’m sorry. Things are complicated right now.” She makes a rude noise in his ear. “The Accords were a mess, Dani – I couldn’t sign them. And then, after the business with the UN,” he is careful not to mention Bucky “Cap needed my help and it was the right thing to do. I’m safe, Dani, we’re all safe and that’s the only thing that matters.”

“ _You never called_.” His baby sister’s voice is soft and small in his ear. It breaks his heart.

“I couldn’t risk it,” Sam says. “I couldn’t put you in danger.”

She sniffles a bit. “ _I know. I’ll tell mama that you’re safe, but Sammy, you’re in so much trouble…_ ”

He presses back against the wall, wants to meld himself with the paint and plaster, wants to disappear, to sleep, to quell the ache between his ribs. “I had to do it, Dani,” he whispers. “I had to.”

“ _You’re a good man, Sammy_.”

Sam never realized how much he needed to hear it, her validation, until it sends a warm rush through his veins and the tears slip out one by one.

“ _Will you be able to come home soon_?”

He cringes. The fact of the matter is, Sam has no idea. Doesn’t know if he’ll _ever_ be able to go home. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I hope so. Is Zoe still awake?”

A beat.

“ _Yeah, let me get her._ ” And then, further away as she holds out the receiver “ _Zoe, honey, Uncle Sammy’s on the phone for you._ ”

There’s static and a few muffled thumps and then “ _hi, Uncle Sam_!”

He melts. The tears come in earnest now, slick and silent. “Hi baby girl – how was your special day?” Sam beams in the moonlight. “The big one-oh, that’s incredible. Last time I saw you, you were just a baby and now you’re getting all grown up on me.”

Zoe babbles in his ear until it’s long past her bedtime. She catalogues her birthday presents and gives Sam her most serious rundown of all the ins and outs of fourth grade drama and he cries happy, heart-aching tears the whole time and tries to pretend, for at least a few precious moments, that all is right with the world.

He leaves the burner phone outside Clint’s door, whispers ‘thank you’ to Steve and Bucky even though he knows they won’t hear.

All that matters is Zoe’s little, chirpy voice in his ear proclaiming “ _I love you, Uncle Sammy. Be careful doing your hero stuff_.”

Sam doesn’t feel like a hero. Not tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *tries to insert as much of my favorite Sam Wilson meta as I possibly can*


End file.
